Thanks for posting. I am not troubled by the fact that you know me well. I am here to test my ideas. I can think of no more astute examiner. I will cut through the tech talk and get to the bottom line whenever possible.

I have followed SNDK for a number of years. I have a serious opinion. It is selling a commodity semiconductor which requires very high capital expenditures for its fabrication. There will be times, like now, when demand outstrips supply, prices are high, and they have a high EPS. I am not certain if the EPS is translating into high free cash flow, but you can check that.

I will correct your description of my stodginess. 3 of my 8, AMAT, KLAC, and NVLS go back to 1996. 4, ALTR, XLNX, LLTC, MXIM, go back to 1998. 1, ASML, goes back to 2001.

I have a question for you. If I am selling picks and shovels to miners or I am investing in the pick and shovel company, should I be able to tell which miners will strike it rich?

My wife has 3 best friends. One, friends for about 23 years, is married to an AAPL employee and I watched their stock go from 12 to 540 (split price 6 to 270). They struck it rich. I never wanted to buy AAPL and I still don't.

Part of the purpose of this thread will be to give my reasons why those 8 are "really the most interesting companies in the market for making money going forward."

A key issue going forward is your "I think will outperform, and only in their outperformance phase." We will need to quantify "think" and "outperform" to arrive at an expectation of performance." I like "think" to have a high probability and "outperform" a healthy premium to to market's performance. You might want to present the factors you believe support a high probability to outperform.